Then there is also the possibility of proxy maintainers. That means finding a gentoo developer willing to commit your ebuilds, but you keeping up with maintenance and bugs. This should be more widely advertised.

Several posts later...

Dagger wrote:

I can fully understand that. Do you know how many people are willing to maintain 5 of their most favourite packages themselves? If we can have 1 dev (mentor) who has 10 users and each one of them maintain 5 packages, than dev can only check, test and correct ebuilds when needed.

If there turns out to be a significant level of interest maybe users and developers can organize, streamline this process, and possibly improve the speed with which, at least certain, packages get updated in the main tree and/or overlays.

I am personally willing to maintain 5, maybe more, packages, partly because I think there are packages that Gentoo should have either in the main tree or in an official overlay and partly because I hope doing so will reduce the load on the developers.

The problem, in my opinion, is that there just aren't enough users stepping up and wanting to get involved. Now is that because there aren't enough users wanting to get involved, or because there are users wanting to get involved but they don't know how to start? For fixing the latter, in addition to the suggestions already made in this thread, perhaps we need to run more "recruitment" and "getting started with development" style articles in GMN. I would consider attempting to write a couple of such articles, from a users point of view, but I just don't have the time right now and probably won't until I've finished my final year at uni.

But, my suspicion is that the reality is that there just aren't enough users who actually want / have the time to get involved with development.

The problem, in my opinion, is that there just aren't enough users stepping up and wanting to get involved. Now is that because there aren't enough users wanting to get involved, or because there are users wanting to get involved but they don't know how to start? For fixing the latter, in addition to the suggestions already made in this thread, perhaps we need to run more "recruitment" and "getting started with development" style articles in GMN. I would consider attempting to write a couple of such articles, from a users point of view, but I just don't have the time right now and probably won't until I've finished my final year at uni.

But, my suspicion is that the reality is that there just aren't enough users who actually want / have the time to get involved with development.

Alright, I am going to let this topic sink. I get it now.

It's certainly not that I'm not interested in proxy-maintainer something for a user. I would gladly proxy-maintain a package or two for a user if that user was responsive to bugs and such. No one has contacted me asking for proxy-maintainership before, so I don't maintain anything for users. Before I was a dev, I proxy-maintained a few packages through people. In none of the cases was I asked to maintain that package, I had to ask someone who maintained similar packages.

So I guess it boils down to users simply not bugging us devs to maintain stuff for them._________________No Man is Just a Number!

With all due respect, I was not trying to "bug" developers to proxy stuff for me or anyone else, at least not yet. I was hoping to see if there were users who are interested in maintaining packages, how many there are, and if there are any, to possibly organize ( the users ) and improve Gentoo in some way. If everything is going well, this really is not necessary. I was just looking for an answer to Dagger's question above and I am getting it.

Also, I would contact a developer to request proxy-maintainership, but that would be "bugging" if the developer is not receptive in the first place. Therefore, why "bug" several developers before I find someone receptive. Considering I may not be the only one doing this, that adds up to a lot of "bugging". User <-> developer relations seem strained as it is, why contribute to this? If there was enough interest, maybe a streamlined process, with less "bugging", could have been worked out between interested developers and users.

Anyway, as I said I am letting it go. Thank you for your post. I just do not understand this, your process, but it seems to be working and that is what really matters.

These forums are primarily a user channel. You may comment on bugzilla requests that you're willing to help out (may not be noticed) or you can contact developers via irc. Personally I wouldn't appreciate proxy maintainer emails on the gentoo-dev mailing list, but as a last resort, this might be o.k., too.

Two remarks:

a) Personally I'm not interested in proxying.
b) You should name the software you're interested in. N packages reads like a wheel of misfortune._________________Please make sure that you have searched for an answer to a question after reading all the relevant docs.